Romance scams plumb new depths with deepfakes
Beth Hyland thought she had met the love of her life on Tinder. In reality, the Michigan-based administrative assistant had been manipulated by an online scam artist.
He had posed as a French man named "Richard", used deepfake video on Skype calls and posted photos of another man to pull off his con.
A "deepfake" is manipulated video or audio made using artificial intelligence (AI) to look and sound real. They are often difficult to detect without specialised tools.
In a matter of months, Hyland, 53, had taken out loans totalling US$26,000, sent "Richard" the money and fallen prey to a classic case of romance baiting or pig butchering, named for the exploitative way in which scammers cultivate their victims.
A projected eight million deepfakes will be shared worldwide this year, up from 500,000 in 2023, says the British government.
About a fifth of those will be part of romance scams, according to a January report from cyber firm McAfee.
Hyland lives in Portage, about 230km west of Detroit, and had been divorced for four years when she began dating again.
She matched on Tinder with a man whose profile seemed to complement hers well. Now, she says this "perfect match" was likely orchestrated.
"Richard" said he was born in Paris but lived in Indiana and worked as a freelance project manager for a construction company that required a lot of travel.
Months of emotional manipulation, lies, fake photos and AI-doctored Skype calls followed. The scammer pledged his undying love, but had myriad reasons to miss every potential meet-up.
Weeks after they matched, "Richard" convinced Hyland that he needed her help to pay for a lawyer and a translator in Qatar.
"I told him I was gonna take out loans and he started crying, telling me no one's ever loved him like this before," said Hyland in an online interview.
But "Richard" kept asking for more money and when Hyland eventually told her financial adviser what was happening, he said she was most likely the victim of a romance scam.
"I couldn't believe it, but I couldn't ignore it," said Hyland.
She confronted "Richard"; he initially denied it all but then went silent when Hyland asked him to "prove her wrong" and return her money.
Police told Hyland they could not take her case further because there was no "coercion, threat or force involved", according to a letter from Portage's director of public safety, seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
A Tinder spokesperson said the company has "zero tolerance" for fraudsters, and uses AI to root our potential scammers and warn its users, in addition to offering factsheets on romance scams.
The United States reported more than US$4 billion in losses to pig-butchering scams in 2023, according to the FBI.
Jason Lane-Sellers, a director of fraud and identity at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said only seven per cent of scams are reported, with victims often held back by shame.
Jorij Abraham, managing director of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, a Netherlands-based organisation to protect consumers, said humans will not be able to detect manipulated media for long.
"In two or three years, it will be AI against AI," he said.
"(Software exists) that can follow your conversation — looking at the eyes, if they're blinking — these are giveaways that something is going on that humans can't see, but software can."
Lane-Sellers from LexisNexis Risk Solutions described it as an AI "arms race" between scammers and anti-fraud companies trying to protect consumers and businesses.
Richard Whittle, an AI expert at Salford Business School in northern England, said he expects future deepfake detection technology will be built in by hardware makers such as Apple, Google and Microsoft that can access users' webcams.
Neither Apple nor Google responded to requests for comment on how they protect consumers against deepfakes, or on future product developments.
Abraham said the real challenge was to catch the scammers, who often work in different countries to those they target.
Despite her dead end, Hyland still believes it is good to report scams and help authorities crack down on scammers.
And she wants scam victims to know it is not their fault.
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